Observing Lent

Dominican cross formed by students and employees of University of Santo Tomas to mark the beginning of Lent

1. Yesterday is the Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, and if you wondered why a lot of people had marks of ash on their forehead yesterday, well, you have just met a Catholic.

2. Lent is characterized by practices of giving something up, particularly something that you really love to do. Fasting is an example, where you need to limit your food intake. Or you could abstain yourselves from eating certain meat. Cutting down your spending, giving more to good causes, stuffs like that. Culture Making has five questions on giving something up for Lent.

3. Does giving Angry Birds (or, worse, blogging!) up for 40 days make sense to you as a way to observe Lent? It will be really tough for me to do so.

4. Our church observes Lent, but I really wish we could observe the Ash Wednesday too. Indeed, I would like us to observe the whole (Western) liturgical year (without the feast of saints, thank you very much). Ain’t happening soon, I guess.

5. Finally: Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.